Dennis Bray

******OBITUARY SUBMITTED BY THE FAMILY********

Dennis “Niles” Bray, son of Joseph Carrie Bray and Oral Lehue Bray, was born January 3rd, 1937 in Bedford, Kentucky. Niles was the eldest son of two. He and his brother Terry grew up in a farmhouse on Bray Ridge and attended Trimble County schools. One year after his 1955 high school graduation, Niles married Betty Lou Kidwell. Upholding the wishes of Niles’ family, the newlyweds began what would be their life’s work, helping to run and eventually assuming operations of Bray orchards and family-farm. Together, between 1956 and 1961, they had four children: Michael, Kevin, Mark and Melinda.

A master farmer and fruit grower, he was a member of the Future Farmers of America, Kentucky Beef Cattle Association, and the Kentucky Roadside Market Association. He worked with the University of Kentucky to develop and patent the beautiful and delicious “Bray Berta” Peach. Every year they’d harvest around 40 acres of peaches from June until September (while also growing a wide array of other fruit and vegetables) all to be sold by Betty at Bray’s Fruit Market on Hwy 421 N or by the wholesalers who came from all over KY, IN, and OH to buy and trade for their own truckloads of Bedford’s special Bray bounty. For many years Niles also farmed tobacco and raised and showed Registered Performance Tested Polled Hereford Cattle and later Gelbvieh Cattle. In the rare moments Niles was not working, he enjoyed riding horses or motorcycles and took several brief but memorable vacations.

Niles continued an ancestral connection to the land he farmed, devoting his entire life to those hills and hollers (valleys), and the trees and animals that prospered on them. He excelled at the material ‘doing’ with physical stamina and endurance. He wore his Levi pants into holes that Betty mended and repaired endlessly through the seasons, and the peach baskets he used for picking were more duct tape than wood by the end. Simple and practical, he didn’t make exceptions. His routines showed a man as unyielding as the daily forces of nature he depended upon for his sustenance.

He was preceded in death by his Grandparents: Joseph S. Bray and Carrie Anna Lou Terrell Bray, Ada Ballard Lehue and Willie Page Daugherty Lehue, Parents: Joseph Carrie Bray and Oral Lehue Bray, son Kevin Bray, brother Terry Bray, and his devoted, loving wife of 67 years Betty Lou Kidwell Bray who died April 19, 2024. His surviving family includes two sons: Michael Bray and fiancé, Terri Eisele, Mark Bray and wife, Judy; daughter Melinda Jo Castor and husband Tony; six grandchildren: Jesse Bray, Dustin Bray, Amy Bray, Kara Smith, Chelsie Bruther and Kearstin Bruther.

Rick Rand will officiate the funeral.

Interment will be private for the family only.